12 May
2012
12 May
'12
10:32 a.m.
Mail is always a random IO workload, unless your mailbox count is 1, whether accessing indexes or mail files. Regarding the other two questions, you'll likely need to take your own measurements.
Wait, maybe there is a misunderstanding. I mean the IO inside one index file, not across the different mailboxes. So within 1 index file that covers a mailbox with say 10.000 emails, how does the IO occur. I would guess pretty random as well, but on the other hand i guess in some ways it could be pretty linear too. If dovecot keeps most changes in memory and writes it all back in 1 go.
Cor